


to burn the castle down before the princess is awake

by MadameDeBergerac



Category: Dracula (Movies - Hammer), Hammer horror - Fandom, The Brides of Dracula (1960)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Discussion of Violence, F/M, Vampire Hunters, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 12:03:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21179111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameDeBergerac/pseuds/MadameDeBergerac
Summary: Years after Abraham and Marianne are married, they recieve news of Gina... and Marianne must reconcile the memory of her dear friend with the fate of the monster who must be destroyed.





	to burn the castle down before the princess is awake

“You’re sure you saw her there? Alone?” Abraham Van Helsing pressed, withdrawing a plate of biscuits like a sharp reflex as his face clouded over. Marianne knew that look—it was the same look he’d given her when she’d told him of… of her first engagement. When he’d learned she’d been kissed by a vampire. It had unsettled her then, almost scared her—that certain sign that something was wrong. Maybe it should scare her now… maybe if she weren’t still so numb.

The Sexton sitting across the parlor from them nodded grimly. “She looked exactly the same as she had at the funeral. Same nightgown, same curls… except her eyes were red. Poor child looked as though she’d been either bleeding or crying.” He pushed away his plate, mouth contorting as if he’d suddenly lost his appetite, and dabbed at his limp grey mustache with a napkin. “I can only imagine what Gina’s family would think if they could see her now…”

“I hope they will not have to.” Marianne hadn’t even realized she’d said it out loud until Abraham and the Sexton turned to look at her, Abraham out of concern, the Sexton out of shock. She paid them no mind or at least tried to, her cheeks burning as she wrung her hands into her skirt. “It would break their hearts.” It had been so long, so many years ago that she felt safe putting it all behind her. Now, for a terrible moment, all she could see was the funeral. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see it… the weeping family in quiet denial, the confused students begging for answers, the ensuing chaos as it looked like she was about to lose her place in the school forever… as everything seemed to fall apart… and there was Gina, so peaceful in her coffin, wreathed in flowers. Completely unaware. 

The touch of Abraham’s hand slipping into hers eased her back to the present, and she squeezed it as he turned back to the Sexton. “And you don’t think she’ll be compelled to leave?”

“I can’t imagine she would. As soon as we caught wind of her presence, I had the Sisters bar the windows and doors and station a cross in front of them. Unless she takes it into her head to scratch her way out with her fingernails, she isn’t going anywhere.” She saw his head tilt for a moment towards her as if to ask something before deciding against it. “The only trouble will be what to do for service in the morning—”

“You won’t have to worry about that, Sexton.” Extracting his hand from Marianne’s, Abraham stood up from the sofa and authoritatively drew himself up to his full height. “If you’ll take me to the chapel, I’ll make sure she never troubles your parishioners or anyone else ever again.”

The Sexton blanched a bit as the offer sank in. “You—You mean you’ll—?”

“It’s all the peace I can give the poor girl, and all the promise I can give you that this contagion can be stamped out.”

“I’ll go with you,” Marianne spoke up, standing in turn and causing both men to look at her again with the same expressions. She had expected them to protest, but it didn’t matter. This was her Gigi, her student, her confidante. Even if her husband would remind her otherwise now, tell her not to waste her tears on some… she couldn’t even bear to think it. She simply couldn’t stay here and do nothing.

As expected, the Sexton immediately raised a hand as if to placate her, his mustache bristling in quiet disbelief. “Oh, I don’t think—this isn’t exactly women’s work—”

“Marianne knows better than most what suffering the undead can both experience and bring about,” Abraham cut him off, his voice mild, but holding no room for debate. “I trust her with my life.”

A muscle was still twitching in the Sexton’s jaw, but he said nothing this time, drawing his coat further around him and readjusting his scarf. “In that case, I’ll… I’ll bring the cab back around and wait for you.” He started for the door before turning around and giving Abraham a wry face. “It’s such a nasty business, isn’t it? Vampires and all that…?”

“It’s not a business I relish, but it is a necessary one. We’ll be with you in a few minutes, Sexton.” And with that, Abraham closed the door behind him, leaving silence in the house once more. Marianne busied herself with the abandoned dishes—it was something to do with her hands—while her husband remained frozen at the door for a moment. Even without seeing his face, she could feel the change coming over him, like a cool breeze in late summer. It was another face she knew very well now, even with his back to her. His shoulders drooped a bit, but seemed to harden at the same time, and as he stepped away, there was a weary resoluteness in his stride. A soldier off to battle. He crossed the sitting room into his tiny study, reached under his desk, and pulled out his weapon—a small leather satchel—before returning and setting it down on the end table to take inventory.

She could finish the dishes later. Reaching for her coat and hurriedly shrugging it on, Marianne peered into the satchel and picked over a few of the small items: vials of silver and hawthorn shavings, a bottle of Holy Water not disguised in an ordinary drinking flash, a wooden cross that fit perfectly into her hand… “You will not mind if I take a few of these?” she inquired, tucking them into her coat pocket. “I don’t want to go into the chapel unarmed—I hate feeling so useless against these things.”

“Please do.” Upon hearing his wife’s self-deprecation, he looked up at her, and his face softened the tiniest bit. “You are far from useless, darling, I promise you. In fact, I’m glad you’re coming with me. Gina knows you. She once loved and admired you—she can listen to you. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to stay here by yourself.” When she drew a tiny silver crucifix on a delicate chain from one of the satchel’s inside pockets, he motioned for her to turn around with a finger and threaded it under her hair, clasping it at the nape of her neck. His hands were warm and dry, almost cracked in places from years of callouses, so different from the cold, soft hands of her former fiance… stop thinking about him, Marianne. He isn’t here now—he is just ash now, he can’t hurt you… still, she resolved to keep this crucifx on indefinitely. Just in case. Perhaps it, too, would come in handy tonight… God, wasn’t that also a terrible thought? Using something so beautiful against someone she once called friend…

“…I think she was jealous of me.”

“How’s that?” came Abraham’s voice over her shoulder.

“Of me and the Baron.” Letting her hair fall back over her shoulder, she turned back around to face him. “I told her about our engagement the night he asked me. I was… so happy.” It seemed so long ago and so far away… like it had happened to someone entirely different. She could remember the ghost of a smile on her face as she shared the secret that night, but it was a hollow thing… no remembered emotion attached to it. Sometimes her skin tingled where he’d kissed her, but painfully, like a burn that never fully scarred over. “And she acted as though she was, too. She was smiling and cheerful and asked me all sorts of questions about him, but… I can’t say how, but it—none of it seemed quite real. As if she was trying to be happy just because I was happy.” That was painful, too, in retrospect—the idea that the last conversation she’d ever had with her friend, Gina had not been honest with her. “And when the Baron found her…” She swallowed thickly, throat suddenly burning now. “I cannot imagine what she thought then. Or what he thought…”

Abraham’s eyes held that same weariness as he nodded, his voice holding a note of pity as he spoke again. “He thought of her only as an easy prize to win—someone he could make false promises to and then humiliate.”

“But what about her?” Marianne pressed on desperately. “Do you think… do you think Gina loved him? Even if he did not—could not love her?”

“I can’t say.” But why not, Marianne was about to ask. Help me make sense of this—tell me why Gina would do this, why he would do this, why I had to lose my only friend here, please, love, tell me… but an gently upraised hand quieted her thoughts for a moment. “I do know that Meinster’s brand of evil can be very seductive. There’s a promise of freedom in it—freedom to love, freedom to do as one pleases… freedom from consequences. I can imagine that was very attractive to a poor girl like Gina.”

That did make some sense… but Marianne knew the Baron, knew his smiling condescension toward the other girls. Knew even his condescension toward her, the foolish woman who rescued him, the foreigner who still struggled with English and couldn’t possibly understand. She was a silly girl, and Gina would have seemed even sillier to him… he could do so much worse than humiliate her. Precious Gina, with all her hopes and dreams… “When I found her that night in the stables… she greeted me like an old friend. She called me her darling, asked me to kiss her… all with that terrible smile on her face and those horrible teeth…” She’d seen that same taunting smile on more than one face now. “I wonder if she learned that from him.”

This time Abraham looked a bit alarmed as he pulled down his coat and shrugged it on, an expression of regret warring in his features as if he wished he could have been there sooner to spare her… Marianne clung to that look. It meant she wasn’t crazy, that he wouldn’t dismiss it as a nightmare… that she might not have been alone, even as she stood there feeling that night’s freezing wind through the slats in the stable walls and glancing back at her friend’s glinting fangs. “I would not be surprised, darling.”

“And then she—she asked me to forgive her. For letting him love her. What—What should I have forgiven her for?” What had he done to her to make her believe such a thing? He’d already taken her soul, twisted her body into something evil and perverse like his—what else could he possibly take from her? Tears actually stung at Marianne’s eyes now, and a hot well of shame rose in her chest. “What did he do to her that I should have forgiven?” He’d never go away, he’d never leave her, that terrible man… even dead, he’d taken so much from them both. Poor Gina, weeping and defiled, alone on ground that burned her feet. This is all my fault, Marianne thought bitterly, pressing her hand hard to her mouth, trying to keep the tears away. This was all her fault… she could have spared Gina this fate. She should have gone with the Baron, should have agreed to marry him. Better her soul than Gina’s. Better for her to have accepted it. “If I had been there when it happened—if—if I would never have freed him—” The well in her chest burst, and her words were lost to helpless sobbing.

In a moment, Abraham’s arms were around her, holding her close against the warmth of his coat as she cried. “It wasn’t your fault, Marianne. None of it was your fault…”

“What—Wh-What will she say now? Now that the B-Baron is gone—now that he’s been… been taken away from her… now that we… she wanted me to forgive her, Bram…”

“Is that what you fear?”

She shook her head, burrowing against his fur collar

“What are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid… that Gina w-will still hate me so much for it that—that no matter what you do to free her soul… that h-hatred will still…”

“Will keep her from Heaven?”

Hearing it out loud wrenched a new flood of tears from her. She is going to hell, your friend will be sent to hell… dear, sweet, supportive Gina, who never deserved it. And the Baron would be waiting for her to torment her again… there was a very small part of her mind that knew such a thought was ridiculous, that knew she had no way to know for sure, but the fear was still there. The fear and the strangling guilt.

“I’m afraid I can promise very little in that respect,” Abraham said softly after a moment. “What she still feels once her soul is at rest is between her and God.” Marianne felt his arms withdraw and she tried to cling on, just for that fleeting safety, but to her relief he only pulled far enough away to hold her loosely at arm’s length. “But I can promise she won’t be suffering any longer, and you will be there to bear witness and help her to the other side. Besides… our God is a forgiving God. No matter what she thinks in her final moments, He will see that she was an innocent and accept her regardless.”

She tried to nod, tried to believe him… and she so badly wanted to. But that outcome still seemed so far away. They had to find Gina first… had to rid her of his contagion. Abraham had defined vampires as plague-carriers to her once, and it felt easier to think that way. That Gina was merely sick beyond cure… not that that was any more comforting. “She—She will not be awake when you…” She trailed off and nodded suggestively over at his bag, still unable to say the words.

“Not if I can help it,” Abraham replied, shaking his head. “If possible, I’ll wait until she goes to sleep before dawn. And if not… I promise I will still try to make it as painless as I can.”

…That, at least, she could live with. For the moment. For Gina’s sake. “I’m glad for that. I don’t… I don’t want her to suffer any more than she has…”

“I know, darling. And she won’t.” He didn’t have to repeat himself, but the steadfast and solemn warmth in his eyes said, I promise you.

In that moment, the words thank you seemed inadequate, so she leaned forward to kiss him, letting that warmth comfort her all over again. They would have all night to deal with cold, dead things. Let her have this now before going to war against them. Abraham’s hand came up to cradle the back of her head, caressing her hair even as she pulled away and was ashamed to feel tears clinging to her lashes again. Less out of fear this time and more out of sheer relief… the fear was still there, but it was duller now. “I’m so sorry for—for falling to pieces like this.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “It’s so embarrassing…”

“Don’t apologize, my love.” His answering smile was thin and tired, but no less sincere. “Thank you for telling me. It will help us both tonight.”

The whickering of horses outside the window gave Marianne a start, prompting a wet laugh out of her before composing herself. “We should not keep the Sexton waiting,” she said, buttoning her coat and patting down her pockets to make sure her borrowed supplies were still there. “He’s probably wondering what is taking us so long.” Taking a deep breath and laying a hand over the cross at her throat for a moment, she nodded again to Abraham, who opened the door to the cold black night. Where lay so many of her nightmares newly formed… but this one would fade before morning. And just this once, she would be safe. One small victory in their war against the darkness. Lifting her skirts as the dead leaves wafted by across the threshold, Marianne took a step.


End file.
